Travers loses star, not luster
The moment he reached the finish line first in the Belmont Stakes June 9, Justify ended the suspense for Horse of the Year and the male 3-year-old championship.
That also proved a series finale for the first undefeated Triple Crown winner since Seattle Slew (1977) and second in history. Compressing six winning starts into 111 days, the Scat Daddy colt gave Eclipse Award voters a free space or two on their yearend ballots. Then he retired to the breeding shed, a presumed life of leisure although the workload be great.
Assessing Justify’s place in history might take some time. Unlike Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, who ended his career winning the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Classic, Justify never faced older horses. Then neither did the ill-fated Ruffian, whose career ended with a catastrophic injury in a match race against Derby winner Foolish Pleasure midway through her 3-year-old season. As did that magnificent filly, Justify should sail into horse racing’s Hall of Fame. Just hold off on comparing him with Man o’ War or Secretariat.
Yet to be announced are the princely sums for Justify’s breeding rights and stud fees, though we can assume that he will command a high price and be mated with the choicest mares. Barring setbacks, Justify’s first foals should arrive in 2020 and be on the track by
2022. One of his sons or daughters could win a Derby or Oaks as early as 2023.
Meanwhile, the sport prepares for the first foals of American Pharoah to face the starter in 2019. As did their sire in 2015, one of AP’s sons or daughters could wear a blanket of Kentucky Derby roses or Arkansas Derby gardenias in
2020.
Even without Justify, Saratoga Race Course presents the
149th Travers Stakes today. The $1.25 million Midsummer Derby anchors a 13-race card including a rematch between crack sprinters Limousine Liberal and Oaklawn Park star Whitmore in the Grade 1 Forego. The Grade 1 Personal Ensign brings together Grade
1-winning fillies Abel Tasman and Elate, the latter showcased at Oaklawn last year before coming to hand for trainer Bill Mott.
As for the Travers, we should get a good line on the horses that Justify beat in the Triple Crown. The 11-horse field includes runners-ups in the Derby, Preakness and Belmont — Good Magic, Bravazo and Gronkowski. So is the Preakness third-place finisher, Tenfold, who won Saratoga’s Jim Dandy last time out and along with Bravazo won at Oaklawn this year.
Bravazo, the only horse other than Justify to compete in all three legs of the Triple Crown, ran second to Good Magic in the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park last time out. His 3-year-old campaign beginning in January with an Oaklawn victory, Bravazo encourages his Hall of Fame trainer, Wayne Lukas, who nearing his
83rd birthday also shows staying power and compares the Awesome Again colt to his 2013 division champion and Travers winner Will Take Charge.
“This rascal looks better today and stronger than any time this summer, right now,” says The Coach. “And that may not be good enough; it still may be a second or a third or a fourth. But you have to, from where I’m sitting, say to yourself, ‘This is the best we’ve ever led him over there.”’ At 12-1, his program odds, Bravazo is a live horse in the mile-and-quarter Travers.
Good Magic, last year’s male juvenile champion, is the early 2-1 chalk although 10 furlongs, at which he faltered against Justify at Churchill Downs, may not be his preferred distance.
Distance should not be a problem for Tenfold, although red flags went up when the Curlin colt drifted outside on the lead in the Jim Dandy. Mendelssohn, named for a composer, could have been renamed Madoff (for a convicted chiseler) after burning money when last of 20 in the Kentucky Derby. Mendelssohn, 12-1 in the program, and Catholic Boy, 8-1, have important victories on dirt and grass — edge going to the latter, produced by the Bernardini mare Song of Bernadette.
Crossing gender lines, Oaklawn-raced Wonder Gadot becomes the first filly to run in the Travers since 1979, when Davona Dale ran fourth to General Assembly. The last time a filly won the race was 1915, when Lady Rotha followed the lead of fellow distaffer Regret in that year’s Kentucky Derby. Think of what Justify might have done against that group of 3-year-old males.